Champagne
by Stradivari
Summary: In the higher echelons of alcohol, champagne such similarties could not be adverted by anymeans, though usually, all you could see were his eyes. ::Semi psyche::


**C H A M P A G N E **

-Stradivari-

**:i: **

_Words. _

Spoken, shouted, whispered, typed on a page…one thing he found throughout his career was that words in whatever form, from whomever, all could be drowned in alcohol. Drowned and swallowed, forgotten and never to resurface again. That was probably why most in his line of profession liked drink so much. The liquid could kill anything, without guns or blood. That was the ultimate advantage of drink. You didn't have to remember. And when you couldn't remember, words couldn't mean a thing.

_He slid the glass across the table, tracing a slender finger through the water that slid with its transparency; dark against the polished yet heavily scarred table beneath. It was this quality that was an idle fascination to a mind that did not interest in anything but all that mattered. In anything but the morbid aspects of life, if you will. He was the best, and he knew it. No point in being modest to yourself. Modesty was for those who could not live up to their own expectations. And when that happened, you might as well give up. Actors. The dangers of letting your profession take you over. _

It wasn't as though he was the typical traumatic-past enthused young man, bent on revenge and on rising in the world. His determination showed, no matter how hard he tried to cover it at first. It was simply too bright. Once, long ago, he attempted on drowning that in alcohol too.

_Staring across the counter, past the shining reflective surface of the liquid, the eyes seem to speak. Ripples, like the ones that form in a pond when a pebble is thrown into its depths. They expanded, a brilliant pool of turquoise…sapphires…but not quite. A shard of lapis-lazuli, too bright to last for long, yet so bright it could not completely fade. Like the echoes that plague a fever-ridden mind. He downed the glass, reaching out for another, and the eyes spoke no more. _

It wasn't as though he wanted to forget what he did, what he had done, what he knew he would do. Killing. It was one of those things you could dissect until the matter no longer existed, but it made no difference. It did not take a psychologist to cut it up, nor did it take a surgeon. _He_ himself did it almost daily. Just as it made no difference whether he held the gun in his left hand or his right. Just as it made no difference if it was his mag rod or a Sig Sauer. It made no difference because the fine line did not define it, it could not. He liked it that way. The only thing was, he was no longer sure who that 'he' was.

No matter.

One, two, three, sixteen-it was all the same, because in the end, one summed them all. Actors. Just constructs, even the original becoming fused with the copies. Fraud if you like. But he was masterfully good at it. You couldn't even tell the difference. He certainly couldn't.

_He lined the empty glasses in front of him, their curves catching the last drops of amber liquid that once flowed swiftly from its rim into his awaiting mouth. They did not taint his lips to their glow, leaving them just as bloodless as before. Strange how the other liquid could not do that. Until this day, no amount of soap would wash it off his hands and fingers. Their clear crystalline bubbles had long since dried away, leaving a sphere imprint, a ring of microscopic foam along the edges of a sandy beach, like the remnants of a tear. _

Difficulty wasn't an obstacle. Determination took care of that. Determination that fueled everything, that made certain his goal was achieved, even when he did not know what that goal was. It wasn't the will that was the obstacle. It was the desire. Once he did know what his desire was. But then, that once, he wanted to change the world. It revolved around that, he knew. Not his ego, not his pride. Those were just the painting upon the white material that covered everything but his eyes. Just adornments, however convincing was never important. It even covered his nose. Breathing was a problem sometimes. It gave him the horrible impression of being buried alive. But always, he would resurface, but only so he could fall down again. Pessimism was a trait we would never be able to be rid of completely.

Drowning his memories in wine. Sometimes, it took him down with it. Sometimes.

Conversation was easily shut out. He wondered if it was this easy to shut his own voice out, 'out', wherever that was. Perhaps he could open a window in his own head and shove it from him, that little voice. And what a repetitive little voice it was too, as if sent there by some invisible force to be everything he wasn't and to make him into that. Slender hands with thin tapered fingers, a chisel in one and oil paints in the other. Chipping away at the wood as if they could break its natural polish. As if that alone wasn't enough.

It never was.

He always wondered how such beautiful lies could be crafted from such horrendous scents.

But because he was able to achieve such lies, he never doubted for long. Just a whiff, the breath that blows away the smell, brief and thin like the east wind. Time passes. Soon, it would just be a picture, a work of art. And you wouldn't be able to smell the paints at all.

_He thought back to the taste, the exquisite tingle of light, the swirling joy that sang only one man's ecstasy. Golden, dark, mahogany and salty clear. The light caught, along with his gaze, the spiraling bubbles that disappeared into the surface that brooked no reflection. It passed his lips long before it could show the world what was behind those painted smirks. How sweet was that power which was given, not through courtesy, but through an unwilling mind. How sweet was it that it could dilute the water that streamed down his face on those rare occasions which it did rain. He never opened his eyes in the sunlight. _

_If you could not see, you could not regret. That was one thing he tried killing in alcohol, and it was the one thing that never really quite died. It left a bitter taste on his tongue, laced through with its usual elegancy which the wine provided. It was a blemish on the otherwise perfect face. Not a grimace. Smiles were all he could manage now. **Him**. Someone he knew. _

_De javu. What a pretty phrase. _

No. He did not consider his job an 'art' in the slightest. Art was something people appreciated. People did not appreciate what he did in his job. He _did, _but again, 'people' required humane qualities. He wasn't sure if he qualified. He never really cared. So he assumed he didn't.

Of course, _he_ was something that was easily slipped into. Like shoes that you chose and put on at the slightest flick of your fancy. One summed up all, and he made sure it was so. Such were his morbid fascinations; he thought it was a job, well done.

You could not tell. You could draw no line, no pale blue line that distinguished the pale gaunt youth to his counter part. No dark line either that separated the darkness that swam beneath his eyes. Eyeholes were necessary, but no matter. Everything else could be covered. And there was no line that divided the mirror to its mirror image. All was well. He knew no other alternative.

Long ago, that alternative was drowned in a flute glass. He remembered spinning it, almost idly, between his fingers. Of course that choice was no longer his to make. But the sweet, pure exhilaration was something he rather cared for more than the bitterness of something un-dead. He left it alone, dark in the corner of his never ending dystopia, and closed his eyes to the sound of beating rain on the tin roof above his head.

_It was bad for his health, he knew. But he could almost hallucinate the wind brushing back his hair, imagine the tangy scent of leaves laden with dew swept mud falling into the recesses of the tarmac road; full of holes and tainted with imperfection. That imperfection seemed to be attractive then. Even through closed eyelids, he could feel the breath of non-existent branches sweep, just out of reach of his eyelashes. A ripple spoke, quiet, like the sound of a rose opening. The breeze sang it away and a single maple leaf covered the sparkling surface. _

_His eyes were still closed. The light could no longer reach its pebble strewn depths. _

_A truck rumbled by, splashing through the puddle and his thoughts. It was then that he looked up. There was no wind and there were no leaves. No rain either for him to cry the rest away. _

It was no challenge for him, really. A challenge was something he could not achieve without changing that exterior. But to this day, he didn't know why he decided to do it. Or rather, _did _without really deciding. He hated irony; trivial, small, repetitive ironyHe never quite explored thoroughly those motivations in his psyche in those few moments after the thunder, those few moments when the sky cleared a pale pink, just moments before the storm. He wasn't a child who scared easily. If you were already afraid, there was nothing to deepen that fear. Whatever came at you, you could ignore. He did this so perfectly that the fear itself did not even recognize him; his _childish_ fears; of a child that he had never been.

That child died a few years back, drowned in the amber delights of a glass.

_He glanced, eyes sweeping across the faces around him to the wooden shelves that held the various bottles and their treasures inside them. The letterings upon their labels hardly mattered, their tinted glasses hiding the clear qualities of their taste. Deep and insinuating, as if one had bottled the scent of an abstract noun, such he never cared for. Love, hate, all were only abstract nouns. _

_He had no need for them. _

It was simple, relatively speaking. Human stereotypes were such easy figures to imitate, such easy enemies to study. Sometimes, a doubt would flicker across his mind to whether _he _was being double crossed instead…whether he was being cheated at his own game.

He would one day look into the depths of a glass and find it not so different from looking into the pool of that substance spilled and blood red across the floor. No reflection in either of them, no matter how clear they were. And he wondered…how that same moonlight could reflect off a diamond, yet is the same through shattered glass. He would wonder then, whether it was the person beyond that glass who was smiling…or his reflection that soon could shed no tears. He wondered too, how that person could smile, even when it was he who shattered that glass.

Was he a coward?

Could that smiling face reach beyond the veil? Could those tears not melt the coldness that had enveloped the surface, to break through…if he could fashion such a prison, surely he could destroy his own creation…Surely he could take it off…

_He remembered the first time he took it in his hands, its texture light between his fingers. Like the feeling her hair gave as it spun gold in the fading light. He remembered slipping it on, tentatively, carefully, full of wariness and warning. It was slightly chilled against his cheeks and seemed to adhere with remarkable smoothness. Tailored to fit. _

_He looked into the mirror then, and saw no difference. His eyes still stared back, clear and blue though his own mind was misted over with the echoing voices of drink. He could not hear what they were saying…but he knew they were wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong…and yet he listened to those words as the apprentice listens to his sensei. And gave them all his heart. _

_Dousing the wisdom as you would douse a cigarette, he dropped it away and watched it sink to the bottom of the sea like an anchor that had been cut loose from a ship. He watched too, as that ship sailed into the ocean, never to come back again. _

_A smile whispered around his lips and he waved it goodbye. _

No. He was no coward. He was an observer, a liar, a killer, a player, an artiste of his own profession…but no coward. And till now, after all considered and all averaged, he wouldn't doubt. He would not _allow_ himself to doubt. He learnt from his mistakes, and never made them again.

If he had to doubt, he drowned that doubt before it could blossom. He was diligent at what he did, no matter what you saw. On the rare occasions that these traits had resulted something worse than expected, he would pause and take in what he had done.

Not unlike a cat, standing beside the chaos ridden road, observing as the men carried the dead body away. The victim that had swerved to avoid the cat…that blinked one eye and disappeared into the shadows.

It once frightened him that the feline would do this the day after, then the next, and the next... It once gave him fear that all it would do was blink and smile. He never knew a cat could smile through such a thing. How it did that, he could only guess. Now, he didn't even wonder anymore.

Sophistication wasn't something he cared for in the life he lived. When he closed the doors behind him, it wasn't complexity and its subtleties he admired. It was the simple minded brilliance that lured the most 'educated' of minds into its hungry jaws.

_The cat yawned once, displaying sharp canines. Then it blinked again, and looked away. _

It was the pleasure of knowing that others were fooled while you stood firmly on reality. The power that it gave to him, knowing that those were the people who thought their fantasies were what he was living. They thought their dreams could smother the thoughts of his nightmares.

He was no fool.

And there was no fate, no _destiny_.

_The face jeered and seemed to mock with the malicious joy only seen on the masks painted for the ghosts which haunted the stage. They were supposed to disappear at the cue of the curtains. They didn't. _

He killed them all, long ago, as soon as they killed him. The same way he murdered all the others. The same way he was murdering himself.

Success secured his place, in a mind that was raised above all others. Not pride, not his ego. Success and success only, its duet played by the sweetness of the power that came with it. _Unwilling power._ The success when all thought you had failed; the rise when you fall, when all around you fell. It was that which gave him the nerve to persevere. The nerve of the person inside. The soul.

_It was easily blown out; just a little child would blow out a candle before he went to sleep. Of course, nowadays, there was nothing but strips of electric lighting. You couldn't blow those into a smoky darkness. _

_But it did not bother him. He found the light switch and determinedly clicked it down. _

_The room fell into darkness in the end. _

His teeth were so white it was almost visible in the layered shadows. Light came through some window to his right, reflecting off the tables and of course, the bottles and glasses. He still held one in his hand, its spindly stem laced between his fingers like the stem of a rose, its thorns drawing blood onto its deep green skin.

He remembered the thought that plagued the perfection he had built up over such a long time.

_The champagne swirled darkly in his hands. _

Without hesitation, he drowned it, ignoring the cry which pierced his own ears from within. The sound brought nothing but a flicker of annoyance across his features and the words brought nothing at all.

_Another smile. Just like the one he wore yesterday and the day before. This time, there was no flitting doubt behind those eyes. It was complete, as if the moon had been shot out of the sky. He set the crystal flute back onto the table top in front of him, leaving just a drop of the liquid behind, imprisoned in its beautiful curves. _

_Not enough to remember him by. _

**:i: **

**Author's Notes:** Take note that this is my first ffvii fanfiction (not to say the first depicting Reno). I realize the style is somewhat out of character for him, but the portrayal was from a perspective which I thought (after reading almost all the renocentric fanfictions) was rather shallowly explored. Rather vague and flowery, looking back, I am somewhat wondering whether you will have picked up on the theme at all, in such a _vague _way are they done.

So instead of boring you to death (if you have not already died from reading this) with unnecessary notes, please take a second to tell me what you thought this passage was about (Passage? Garbage? J)

Constructive Criticism is good for my health. Flame…if you must. (Will most likely expand/edit with advice). Hope there was not too many technical errors. If there are any at all, please tell me and I will edit and reload.

Please review!


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